Port’s truck smog reduction plan

As the Port of Seattle tries to clean up the aging fleet of diesel trucks that haul containers to its seaport terminals, non-profit Cascade Sierra Solutions’ plan – to retrofit trucks whose smog-producing nitrogen oxides emissions are too high for use at California’s ports and then lease them to owner/operators at low cost – is rising to the fore.

Frank Van Haren is a senior environmental specialist in the air quality program of the Washington state Department of Ecology. Van Haren spoke with the P-I about why Ecology supports the Cascade Sierra Solutions plan – and the possible impediments to making it work.

“$500,000 for the program is there” in Ecology’s budget, Van Haren said. “Still, the project may be in jeopardy because of some delays. The California Air Resources Board had to change their rules that require that trucks turned in be scrapped – that’s scheduled to be approve in their Feb. board meeting. They are having the same kind of economic woes we’re having here, and they haven’t released the bonds to support the 1B grant, but they are going to put together an emergency resolution to get the money to get the bonds sold.”

“The grant money has cycles, and it’s one of those situations where if you don’t use the money, it goes back,” Van Haren said. “This particular account is one of those ones that has to have the money expended by June 30 of this year. Other pieces that we could probably fund under that time frame include doing low rolling resistance tires, retrofits –things that could be purchased earlier.”

“But we’re running into problems with that, too,” Van Haren said. “If we were to buy idle reduction equipment, because idle reductions reduce fuel use, it provides a direct financial benefit to the owner of that truck, and you use public money to give advantage to a private entity.

“It provides public good but…it’s a slipper slope, and we don’t want to go there – if the trucks leased by Cascade Sierra Solutions, and only in Washington state, it could work,” Van Haren said. “It is a good use of public money, and as long as we’re getting at the goal of reducing diesel particular emission, I personally feel good about it. The use of public funds for private entities gives other people grief, and I don’t blame them.”

Whether the project, which Cascade Sierra Solutions applied to Ecology for $1.2 million to fund in June, can be implemented is a matter of timing and technicalities, Van Haren said.

“This money to spend by June 30 can always be spent on another project,” Van Haren said. “You can ask for a roll over – it’s fairly common in government, although we prefer not to do it.”

“They asked for $1 million from the EPA’s federal diesel reduction grant,” Van Haren said. “It’s been seven months, and they haven’t made the award announcement.”

As for the Northwest Ports Clean Air Program, “we like the carrot approach,” Van Haren said. “We’ve had about $25 million for the past five years from the state Legislature for a program to retrofit schools and public fleets. We cleaned up all the suitable equipment that we could with this money…so in other words, the public paid to fix up and clean up the fleet they owned, and in my view, I think the private sector needs to pony up their own fleet because we ponied up to clean our fleet.”

“The private fleet was 90 percent of what’s out there that needs to be cleaned up – the total cost we estimated to clean up all heavy duty diesel fuel equipment, to do ‘em all in Washington state, which didn’t include ocean going vessels and harbor craft, was $200 million in August 2007,” Van Haren said. “Now, ten percent of what’s out there is public – if you clean up 10 percent of the problem, it’s ten percent, but still 90 percent of what’s out there that is going to be affecting people’s health is in the hands of private industry.”

“We obviously can’t come up with that kind of money to clean up the private fleet – we
provide incentives and focus on where the most people are: around ports and transportation corridors,” Van Haren said. “With limited funds, and to get the most bang for the buck, we go do the ports and privately owned refuse vehicles that are in people’s neighborhoods – and we give grants to people who are willing to act early.”

“This is a good project – it helps with the clean air strategy that we completely support and were part of,” Van Haren said. “Cascade Sierra Solutions is a nonprofit with a really good track record, everything made sense to give it a little higher priority.”

Other Ecology efforts to clean up the air include “retrofitting over a half million worth of cargo handling equipment at the Port of Tacoma and the Port of Seattle,” Van Haren said. “Seven terminals applied for grants…at the Port of Tacoma, it is Totem Ocean Trailer Express, Ports of America, and Washington United Terminals – at the Port of Seattle, it’s the terminals run by Northland Services (Terminal 115), Eagle Marine Services (Terminal 5) and Stevedoring Services of America (Terminal 18, 25 and, soon, 30).”